


a weight that could fold you

by contrequirose



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Author is disabled, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, Curses, Disabled Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fantasy Medicine, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hurt/Comfort, Mobility Aids, Multi, Permanent Injury, Post-Canon, Sick Character, Whump, fantasy edition, misuse of dnd mechanics, this fic is all my whump desires in one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:47:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29972751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contrequirose/pseuds/contrequirose
Summary: It’s strange how quickly it feels like it came on, Caleb muses, months later. How quickly his world fell apart.But in reality, it started slow, and it started with blood on his hands as he stood shaking over Ikithon’s still body.There is fighting still to be done after the battle is won.(Caleb centric post-canon sick fic, focused on chronic illness and disability)
Relationships: Astrid/Eodwulf/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 21
Kudos: 83





	1. sunken stone

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for internal discussions of death, dark mindset, illness, and caleb typical self hatred
> 
> I've written this while dealing with my own health issues for the past few months; if you enjoy it or if it resonates with you, I wish you well.

It’s strange how quickly it feels like it came on, Caleb muses, months later. How quickly his world fell apart.

But in reality, it started slow, and it started with blood on his hands as he stood shaking over Ikithon’s still body.

In the end, the fight with his master lasts minutes that feel like hours, energy whirling around him as he cast spell after spell, Astrid and Eodwulf at his sides, the Nein surrounding him.

Ikithon goes down with a web of fire to his face, his hair melting around his sagging skin, goes down to Yasha’s great sword cleaved through his spine, with Beauregard’s fists against his sternum and Astrid’s acid arrows dripping onto his skin and Eodwulf’s smite still lingering in the air with the smell of ozone.

In the moments before his death, he whispers something, lips stuck around half-formed words. He doesn’t hear them, then. Later, he wishes desperately that he had heard something, that he had known what he had said, what curse incantation had passed on his last breath.

But in the moment, he does not hear those words, and Ikithon dies.

It takes weeks for the dust to settle, for the details of who will be the new Archmage to be figured out. For the arguments that he has, for hours and hours with Astrid and Eodwulf, to come _home_ with him, to come in from the cold, to fade.

But, eventually, they all leave Rexxentrum behind, hale and whole, and head for the clear blue of the Nicodranas sky.

They do come. Astrid and Eodwulf, he means. They come home with him.

For weeks, in Nicodranas, in the home that he and the Nein purchase and then almost immediately abandon, to live in the mansion near-full time -

He’s never been this happy.

It goes like this.

They buy a house, in Nicodranas. It’s huge, and lovely, with rooms for all of them and comfortable seating and a kitchen that Caduceus approves of - and parts of it get used, of course. People sleep in their rooms, when they feel like it, and use the kitchen to gather with their friends and guests and neighbors, but most of the time…

Most of the time, they step through the portal he has engraved into the sides of the downstairs hall closet, a sense of permanency that he never thought he was going to get to have, and they step into his tower, to a world of stained glass and peaceful cats and easy living.

The mansion is not… meant to be permanent, not exactly, but he can accomplish the same effect by tying it to a single place with a ritual casting of the spell, repeated through stored energy every day so items placed within don’t disappear, and it stays up and usable for weeks on end. He just has to remember to top up the energy every once in a while, but any of them can do that, even Beauregard and Veth, and so he rarely has to worry about it.

(This will turn out to be a _very_ good thing, but that comes later.)

The spell refreshing once a day means that he can still add things, and he does end up changing his bedroom after Astrid and Eodwulf move in, to something more comfortable, more personalized…

And, well, if he makes his bed large enough for three to fit comfortably without having to touch, no one’s mentioned it yet.

As it turns out, they don’t need to mention it. Astrid and Eodwulf move into his rooms with silence and grace, and he’s not sure if the Nein have even noticed that their rooms have been empty for weeks, now.

It’s been seven weeks since Ikithon died, and he is so blisteringly content.

It makes sense, then, that that happiness could not last.

It starts slow. He wouldn’t have even noticed, at first, truly - he doesn’t need to fight for his life on any kind of regular basis anymore, and the spells he uses now are more cantrips than anything else.

But, one day, a week later, he is trying to cast telekinesis - a spell he’s cast many times, at this point, that should be known to him, known, and practiced enough for it not to fail, but -

He reaches for the energy of the spell, to carry a sack full of laundry down the tower to the inner workings of the cats’ laundry room, and it fizzles out through his fingers.

It’s weird, the feeling. Like he hadn’t slept enough to recover the energy exhausted the previous day, except he had, he knows he had, because he had slept long and hard with his head pillowed on Eodwulf’s chest, but he shrugs it off, and carries the laundry down himself. He probably just forgot to prepare the spell correctly, he tells himself. Nothing to worry about.

The next day, he tries to change Frumpkin’s shape, just from a cat into an octopus, for a day planned at the beach - and that spell, too, fails, the ruins smudged beneath his fingers, the incense unburning in the center brazier. That… is more worrying, but still not essential. He’s probably just - a residual stress reaction, he tells himself. From everything that had happened these past few months. Frumpkin can stay home today.

It’s another few days before he notices something else. He’s been… not exhausted, he hasn’t done anything to merit the word, but he isn’t sleeping well. Wakes up, too frequently, from forgotten nightmares and moments of panic that leave him restless, walking aimlessly through the halls of the house.

His legs ache, most mornings, but he is no stranger to pain. It makes sense that years of being on the run, of muscle wastage in the asylum and all the injuries he’s taken since then are catching up to him.

The dizziness, though, now that - that is disruptive.

It isn’t bad at first, just mild wooziness when he stands up too fast, when he stands too long, when he’s out for hours on the hot sand with Jester and the others. But as the days wear on, it gets worse, until he gets up from lying on the couch, reading, one day, in full view of the Nein, and has just barely enough time to lean back towards the cushions rather than the glass of the coffee table as his vision blanks out and he feels his knees buckle.

He comes to to arms around his shoulders and his head pillowed in Astrid’s lap, her terrified eyes looking directly at him, Caduceus and Jester and Eodwulf all flitting above him in the corners of his vision.

“Caleb, if you’re about to say to me that you’re fine and just stoop up to fast, I swear to all the fucking gods -” Astrid starts, eyes narrowed and mouth tight, and he rolls his eyes up at her.

“Well, apologies, because that’s exactly what I’m going to say.” He pats her thigh, and sits up again, carefully keeping the wave of dizziness off of his face as he blinks black spots out of his vision. “I lied down too long.”

“… right, Caleb.” Astrid glares at him, and huffs. Above her, Jester’s hands tangle together, worry present in her face.

“Will you let me just - check you out, Caleb, just a little bit? Real quick?” She bounces on her heels as the rest of the Nein start to bury themselves in whatever task they were doing before, his momentary lapse forgotten now that he seemed fine.

He shrugs, and she takes that as an approval, blue fingers laden with rings coming to rest along his wrist as her palm glows with pale rays of blue light. Her nose wrinkles, for a moment, and he stares at the ceiling. He’s sure he’s fine. Jester will peel back from him, and give him a grin, and tell him to drink more water, and that he’s fine.

And that’s just what she does, so the moment passes without comment, and he hauls himself back to his room, claiming that he’s in need of a nap and well -

He didn’t exactly intend to take a nap, but once he’s in bed it seems like too much of an effort to get up.

When he next gets a chance, he alters his rooms, just a bit. An ever-refreshing jug of water near his bed, so he can wash away the copper aftertaste of nightmares and dizziness as soon as he wakes up. More pillows on his bed, so he can prop himself up and read while the others are occupied. He has armchairs, just for that purpose, but it’s been so loud in the main rooms, as of late, people ducking in and out, constantly talking. And curling up in a smaller armchair, no matter how comfortable, always send his legs into a spiral of aching like he’s eighty-years old from the waist down.

Nothing the others will notice, but just… little things. He is older, now, after all, older than he thought he would ever be. Maybe this is just a consequence of the kind of life he’s lived.

And, well - he’s fine. This is fine.

* * *

He is, quite possibly, not fine.

It’s a week from when he passed out the first time, and things have not improved. If anything, they’ve gotten worse - he’s caught himself on the verge of passing out more times than he can count now, heartbeat thudding in his ears and head faint and vision blanking to darkness - though he’s at least managed to keep them to himself.

The ache in his legs and arms has not improved, either - if anything, it’s worse, pain sparking as he tries to do fine motor movements, when he stays still for too long, when he stands up for too long or sits too long - more and more, it feels like the only position he can exist in with less pain is lying down in his bed, but even then, there’s echoes that never go away. 

He really, honestly, doesn’t know what’s going on with him. Normally, when he feels terribly, he at least has _some_ semblance of an idea, some knowledge that he took a bad hit during a fight, that he tripped and hit his elbows on the way down, that he was slammed with necrotic damage that sent old wounds aching, but it’s been months since he was last in a fight, weeks, and weeks since he was sleeping somewhere that wasn’t his own bed. But still, despite being in the best position he’s been in years -

He feels like shit, and it’s not going away, and his magic continues to fizzle and fade along with him. He tried to light a candle with a cantrip, last night, and had only managed in feeling like he’d set his hands on fire with phantom pain.

He’s not sure if the others have noticed, yet. Astrid and Eodwulf must have at least noticed something, but none of them have been sleeping well, nightmares rising in the quiet of night, and they probably attribute it to that. If anything, he’s just stressed, still, from the fight to take down the Assembly. He just needs to relax.

He’ll be fine.

And, really, he is fine. The dizziness is almost gone when he wakes up the next day, and his cantrips are once again working fine - working well enough that he finally feels like he can make good on Yussah’s offer to copy spells at his tower, with Eodwulf and Astrid in tow. He’s in a good mood, and it shows, his smile infectious and sending the three of them into intermittent fits of laughter as they walk down to the Open Quay, spending hours at Yussah’s tower before going back home. His head aches mildly by the end of it, but it’s nothing that can’t be explained away by considering that he’s been reading in a dimly lit room for the past day. Even the aches in his legs and arms and joints have mostly faded, tolerable enough that he makes the walk there and back without tripping or wincing. It’s a good day.

He will realize, later, that this was his last good day for a long while. That he should have enjoyed it more while it was there.

But, alas, foresight was never one of his specialties.

He has a dream, that night. One would almost call it prophetic if he believed in fate. Others might just call it bad luck.

He’d call it his subconscious being able to guess right on target.

_All around him are walls, towering above him. Thickly draped velvet, crimson red, that reminds him of blood and of long hours spent in Ikithon_ _’s company in equal measure. A sound, faint but growing louder, of someone - something - of some crying, gasping sobs that grow louder and louder as his feet carry him forward._

_The curtains fall around him, and he extends a hand, to peel through the layers of fabric and find the source of the cries, but all his hand reaches is more fabric, layers upon layers upon layers of curtains that seem to move closer to him with every breath he takes, wrapping him in darkness and heavy cloth that will not shift, no matter how hard he struggles._

_He tries to shout, to call for help, but he makes no sound but cries, the cries in the dark becoming louder, more insistent. It_ _’s him, he realizes. He’s crying._

_He_ _’s trapped. With every flinch, every movement, he is wrapped up tighter and tighter, heaviness overwhelming his limbs, his torso, his eyes, his mouth. He can feel his heart stuttering in his chest, struggling to beat against the crushing weight. He wheezes on every exhale, barely able to get air in._

_But at that point, the weight stops being added. No more cloth is added on. He stays like that, sweating and shivering and in pain and struggling to breathe, for what feels like hours for what feels like days for what feels like weeks_ _…_

_He hears his Master_ _’s voice, ears catching the tail end of some horrific incantation, and he braces himself for the final blow -_

Caleb wakes up with a gasp that quickly turns into a cough, air burning at the back of his throat as he tries to force life back into his lungs. For a long minute, he’s unsure if he’s still dreaming or not. That horrible weight is still there, pressing onto him and sending jolts of pain through his joints, but he can see, and he sees no cloth, no curtains, no wrappings. All he sees is his bed, and then, as he continues coughing, unable to catch his breath, Eodwulf’s annoyed face as the man wakes up, features set into a grimace until he sees Caleb struggling for air.

“Br - oh, _scheisse_ ,” he spits out, and with one hand hits Caleb hard on the back, the other reaching over and shaking Astrid roughly. Caleb sucks in a gulp of air with the force of the blow, but keeps wheezing as the pain from it settles in, just that one strike feeling like fire on his skin. He’s crying, now, tears mixing with snot on his face as he struggles for air and gods he doesn’t know if he’s just choking on spit or if he’s sick or if the dizziness and black in his vision is because he sat up too fast or because he’s suffocating -

Eodwulf lays a hand on him again, but not in a strike, this time lit with the black light of the Raven Queen’s blessing, and Caleb finally, finally, sucks in a clean breath of air, the coughs settling to a low wheeze as he huffs, hunched over in bed with his arms wrapped around his stomach. He expects the spell to wipe away his other troubles, as well, but with a sinking feeling in his chest he realizes that he doesn’t feel any better - in fact, with the clarity of air behind him, he realizes that he feels worse, now able to take stock of just how horrific the rest of him feels.

His heart is still pounding in his chest, breathing still labored and too fast, and he can hear himself wheeze. His throat hurts like he’s swallowed fire, and the rest of his body feels like it’s been replaced with lead, heavy and aching and hard to move. Even just the effort of sitting up feels exhausting. He just woke up but truly all he wants to do is lie back down, and judging from the lingering dizziness that might not be a choice, and rather something forced upon him. It’s like everything bad thing he’s felt over the past few weeks has hit him all at once, and he’s powerless in the face of it.

Astrid is awake now, woken by Eodwulf’s rough shoving, and he manages to focus enough to respond when she holds a hand up to his chest, breathing exaggeratedly. He follows her breathes, struggling at first but then evening out as he calms down enough to stop hyperventilating, but the wheeze is still present, and he feels faint.

“Caleb, _liebling_ , do you have an inhaler here?” Astrid’s face is serious, and Eodwulf is already out of bed, shirtless and clad in only his thin black sleep pants. “You should have told us that your asthma had come back…”

He shakes his head at her, and mumbles, “Not… back. Hasn’t… been this bad in… not since... academy.” Getting those words out is a struggle, and he’s wheezing harder again at the end of it. He had struggled so much with illnesses and his asthma as a child, but it had been one of the first things he had fixed at the academy. He had carried his inhaler as a backup even past that, of course he had, but he hasn’t had one since the asylum.

Astrid rubs her hand on his chest, and he flinches. Logically, she isn’t pressing that hard, but the motion of her hand feels oppressive against the weight he feels across his body.

“Eodwulf, go wake up Caduceus.” She orders, carefully lifting her hand and settling for holding his own hand, instead of his chest. “Caleb, can the second floor create medicines?”

He nods, achingly slowly. “Won’t… work outside of… the tower…. But… yes,” he gets out, and Astrid nods.

She turns back towards Eodwulf, now more dressed, a long shirt thrown over his sleep clothes. “Try and get an inhaler from downstairs, as well. Come back with Caduceus and hopefully that - I’ll get… I’ll get some of the cats to bring warm water, hot towels -” she starts to murmur to himself, and Caleb sinks against his pillows, exhausted with the effort of holding himself up. The wheezing isn’t letting up, any, and if he loses his focus for even a moment his breath starts to pick up, galloping out of his control unless he holds tightly to the reins. Minutes pass, like that, with Astrid leaving for a brief moment only to come back with a bowl of steaming water and some towels, one that she lays across his forehead and the other his chest as she balances the bowl in his lap. He breathes in the steam for another long series of minutes, but it barely helps, and his chest feels tighter and tighter as he watches Astrid’s eyes narrow, her eyebrows furrowed in worry.

But, eventually, Eodwulf returns, Caduceus in tow, the normally calm firbolg looking frazzled and worried, and Eodwulf presses a familiar piece of carved wood into Caleb’s palm. It even looks like the one he has during his time at the academy, and his fingers fold around the shape with ease, even if lifting his arm to his mouth feels like fighting gravity on the sun. He manages, though, and depresses the runes in a remembered sequence, the cool mist settling into his mouth and racing down into his lungs. The magic fizzles as it goes, cold and sparking, and he shivers, but in another moment, it’s caught up in his own systems and the wheezing starts to fade, every breath he takes easier than the last.

That, at least, helped.

“Not feeling well, I take it, Caleb?” Caduceus’s calm voice is belayed by the worry written across his face, and with new air in his lungs Caleb nods, sinking even deeper against the pillows at his back.

Eodwulf sits on the edge of the bed, attention locked on him, and Astrid takes the now-lukewarm bowl of water away, switching out the cloth on his brow for a fresh one.

They wait for him to speak.

It feels like he’s fighting back molasses, drowning him.

“I… haven’t been feeling well, lately,” he starts, and stops, not wanting to worry them. “Nothing too bad, just - aches, and dizziness, and fatigue. I thought I was over it, yesterday, but…” he shrugs. “I suppose not.”

Eodwulf and Astrid exchange a knowing glance, and he cringes, realizing that he hadn’t been hiding it as well as he thought he had. Caduceus, though, simply takes the statement with a nod, and reaches out towards his hand. “May I? Let me try a diagnostic, see if you picked up a bug recently.”

Caleb nods, and Caduceus takes his hand, soft palms and the light fur on his fingers tickling the scarred-over skin of his own hands. The firbolg closes his eyes, briefly, and a warm pink glow covers their intertwined hands as he opens his eyes again, that same pink shining as he looks over Caleb. In a minute, the glow fades, and Caduceus comes out of the spell frowning.

“I can’t find anything… wrong, so to say,” Caduceus says, slowly, but he looks frustrated. “The spell is throwing warning signals left and right, but there’s no source.”

He bits his lip, and places his hand flat against Caleb’s forehead. “You are a little warm…” he mumbles, and with his other hand turns Caleb’s wrist over and starts taking his pulse.

Caleb sits still, watching as Caduceus counts out beats under his breath, and the firbolg grimaces when he’s done counting. “Heart’s working overtime, too, though that can probably be attributed to the asthma attack…”

Caleb, less than wisely, does not inform Caduceus that his heart has been racing for weeks, now.

Caduceus takes his hands away, and rocks back on his feels, pajamas flitting about in sheets of spun silk. “There’s nothing I can do, right now, other than wait and see if this is either the tail-end of a bug, or the start of one. I’d recommend that you just rest, today, Caleb. Wake up in another few hours and see how you’re doing… let’s keep that inhaler up here, nice and accessible, hm?” Caduceus pats his shoulder, and tugs the blankets pooled at Caleb’s waist up around him, half-forcing him to lay back down.

Astrid murmurs an agreement, lack of sleep catching up to her - it’s only four am, he realizes, and he ticks another mark of him being an awful partner, forcing them all to wake up so early in the morning - and Eodwulf grabs Caduceus’s shoulder, sharing a look of gratitude before showing the other man out of their rooms. Caleb himself is fading fast, the awful weight across his body dragging him back to exhaustion even through the residual panic of the nightmare and subsequent asthma attack, and in several heavy blinks he watches Eodwulf return, and slip into bed beside him and Astrid, warm against the covers.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, eyes unable to stay open, and Astrid hits him gently with the edge of the quilt.

“What, for having an _asthma_ attack? Don’t be an idiot, Caleb.” She snuggles against his side, and he muffles down the wince at the pressure. He wants her there. He wants both of them there. He’s just being - weak. Annoying.

He’ll go back to sleep, and all of this will be nothing more than a passing memory.

“Sleep well, _liebling_ ,” Eodwulf murmurs, and he feels the soft press of lips against his scalp… and then he’s falling, sliding backwards into darkness as sleep overtakes him.

* * *

It’s hard to tell whether he’s truly awake or not, when he attempts to blink his eyes open some unknowable amount of time later.

Everything hurts. It feels like his lungs are struggling under a layer of bricks, weight pressing against his chest as he hears his heartbeat unsteadily in his ears, the faintest wheeze audible, and when he finally peels his eyes open, he has to close them again immediately, the light streaming through the shaded windows in his room assaulting his eyes.

He must make some noise, some groan or whimper, because he can feel and hear one of his partners starting to stir next to him. Normally, he would muffle any sign of distress while they’re sleeping, he would never want to disturb them, especially not now, but -

He’s not sure if he’s even making noise or not. He’s not sure of much.

It hurts.

He’s crying, he realizes faintly, and the sensation of water trickling down his cheeks feels like acid.

“… mm... You were… wait, shit,” he hears Eodwulf murmur, and then louder as he wakes up. “Bren? Br- Caleb, Caleb, hey, what’s wrong?”

Caleb cringes at the noise, hands wanting to fly up and cover his ears, but he can’t, his arms can’t move, and everything is so heavy, and it hurts, it hurts it hurts it hurts -

“Fuck, fuck - migraine? I’m going to assume migraine -” his voice drops to a low whisper, and Caleb hears as Eodwulf gets up from the bed, shaking Astrid awake and the sound of the curtains closing. With the light gone, it’s more bearable to open his eyes, but it’s still exhausting to do so, and he feels another stream of tears run down his face.

Astrid wakes up with a snort, and then at Eodwulf’s silent gesturing, gets out of bed as well. He hears the door click, an arrow to his brain, and he whimpers again, unable to stop the noise from escaping.

“World’s really not being kind to you, today, huh.” Eodwulf’s voice is almost inaudible, but it’s finally at a volume that Caleb can bear, and no more tears fall. He blinks his eyes open again, into the safety of the dark, and moves his head slowly so that he can see the bare outline of Eodwulf.

He’s sure that he looks a right mess, in Eodwulf’s better dark vision, and he tries to wrangle his thoughts together into some semblance of words.

“S-s-some, something -” he starts, and swallows. His tongue feels wrong and thick and clumsy in his mouth. He can think, but it’s hard to focus to get the words out in the weight of everything else.

“Hurts,” he tries again, and he just barely sees the worry cross Eodwulf’s face in the dark.

“I bet it does, _liebling_. Astrid went to get a pain potion, she’ll be right back, and then you can get some more rest, alright?”

He blinks at Eodwulf, and lets his neck flop back to staring at the ceiling. It’s so much effort to move.

But he manages a hum in response, and Eodwulf sits on the edge of the bed.

They sit there in silence for a few minutes, Caleb’s attention and awareness fading in and out as he breaks through overwhelming waves of pain married with exhaustion, until Astrid slips back in through the door, the noise once again grating against his ears.

Before he can focus in again, Eodwulf’s arm is around his shoulders, propping him up enough to sip the potion, and he tries to bring his arms up to grasp the bottle, really, he does, but it’s so hard to move that his hands just lay weakly twitching under the covers, and he’s stuck staring blankly at the potion. Astrid takes it, instead, and tips it to his lips, and he pushes past the embarrassment of having to be fed it to drink it, bitter liquid falling down his throat, followed by blessed, blessed relief.

It doesn’t last long. Just as the relief reaches his fingers, his toes, pain cancelled out by a blissful coolness, it starts to - to shiver, to crack, energy crackling in his veins until he’s forced to curl up around himself, shivering and sweating, and he just barely hears Astrid say, “-Wulf, get a bucket -” before he’s leaning over the edge of the bed, last night’s dinner coming up like fire from his stomach as he coughs, arms barely able to support him. He falls back after he’s done, absolutely exhausted, and lays there, shivering, the dizziness that’s been following him for weeks swelling up and swallowing him whole as he blinks away spots in his vision that refuse to budge. He feels cold and hot and feverish and exhausted and wired and in _pain,_ all at once, too much too much too much, and in every increment he blinks he feels time slipping away faster, noise fading in and out as he struggles to breathe through it -

He passes out, at some point, he thinks, because the world is dark and silent when he wakes again, the pain slightly lessened, enough that he feels less like he’s losing his mind.

Someone is in the room with him, he thinks. He can hear, just faintly, the sounds of pages flipping, of feet kicking against the wood of his bedframe, but everything is muffled. He panics for a moment, thinking his hearing is going, but he shifts his head and notices that someone’s placed earmuffs over his ears, soft against his skin. Everything around him is soft, actually, even softer than his normal sheets, and they don’t hurt. For once, nothing touching him hurts, and he’s unable to stop the soft sigh from leaving his mouth as his eyes flicker. The pain’s still there, inside him, but it’s less oppressive now, more something that he can manage. Less being stabbed through the eyes level, and more just like he’s fallen off a roof and landed into a pit full of dull rocks.

Whoever’s in the room with him must hear the noise he made, because he can feel them shift, standing up from the bed, and after a few seconds there’s the gentle press of tiny fingers on his wrist, taking his pulse with deft ease. Veth, he realizes, the size of her hand familiar, the action even more so, from months nearly dying on the run. He tries to sit up, and fails entirely, barely managing to keep his eyes open as he lets out a low groan.

“Caleb, shh, shh, you’re okay…” Veth sounds calm yet worried, and he tilts his head to stare at the outline of her figure, unable to make out her features in the dark. “We’re in the tower, in Nicodranas. You’re safe, we’re all safe. We’re all here. We’re trying to figure out what’s wrong, okay? Just rest.”

He turns that sentence over in his head, and something tells him that this isn’t the first time he’s woken up since the ill-fated pain potion, because Veth is repeating what she does when he comes out of a particularly bad nightmare or flashback, what she usually has to repeat several times before he fully realizes where he is.

“H-how… long?” He manages, mouth not cooperating, and he watches Veth’s ears flick.

“It’s been about sixteen hours since ah - since Eodwulf tried a pain potion. You’ve woken up a few times but… the others have said you’ve been pretty out of it.” She holds his wrist, gently, and then lets her fingers slip up so that she’s holding his hand. He squeezes back, barely able to muster up enough strength to move his fingers, and is rewarded with a hum from Veth, quiet through the earmuffs.

“We - ah, we replaced your sheets with some from downstairs… they got a little messy, earlier, and then the first ones we got made you - well, that’s not important. These are nice, they have little cat paw prints on them… and the earmuffs, those were Astrid’s idea, she noticed you kept flinching from the noise - we were going to try an eye mask, if turning off the main light wasn’t enough, but that seemed to have worked out okay.”

He hums back at her, unable to really respond, and watches as Veth’s ears twitch down again. She swallows, and continues. “If you’re up to it, we’d really - ideally, you drink some water, eat something, let Eodwulf or Caduceus help you wash up a bit, and go back to sleep. Caduceus and Jester have an idea, of what’s wrong, but they - if things aren’t better tomorrow, they might go get a doctor out in the city. If - if that’s okay?”

Her other hand twists in the fabric of her dress. “I know it’s hard to talk right now - so, um. Just… however you can respond?”

Slowly, achingly, he twists his fingers into a loose fist, and nods it against her hand. He is thirsty, he realizes, mouth dry, and he’s starving as well. He hasn’t eaten well, recently. And while he has no idea if he could make it to the bathroom under his own power, and hates the idea of being vulnerable enough to let his friends help him bathe - he feels gross, sweaty, and still tainted by the scent of his earlier vomiting, and the idea of being clean is a desirable one.

The idea of someone _else_ seeing him like this is not, but he - he can admit that he needs help, at this point. And if Jester and Caduceus don’t know what’s wrong, an actual cleric, one trained solely in medicine and not just combat triage, might have a better idea.

“Good, good, that’s good, Caleb. I’m going to get - who would you rather come in? Eodwulf, or Caduceus? Or - I can ask Yasha? Or Jester?”

Bathing requires nakedness, which is something that he _does not_ need Jester to see, his lingering crush making him blush internally at the thought. Caduceus or Yasha he’s… more comfortable with, but really, there’s only one choice.

He forms his hand into an E, thumb folded into his palm and fingers folded above it, and Veth nods. “I’ll tell him to come in, then. One last choice - do you think you could try and eat some real food? There’s soup, and rice, and a nice smoothie one of the cats made, earlier. Or you can just have one of your magic boba. Your choice.”

He forms the letter B - so close to E, that it’s easy enough to make - and Veth squeezes his hand gently, setting it back down on top of the blankets. “Boba it is. I’ll go call Eodwulf, alright?”

He blinks at her, and she slips out of the room, door shutting with a muffled click.

This is… perhaps more serious than he had thought it to be. The asthma attack this morning… just how wretched he felt, waking up after that… what happened with the potion… looking back, on all the weeks leading up to this, it paints a picture of something seriously wrong creeping up on him. He was a fool to ignore it, to try and minimize it.

He should have told someone.

He drifts, in the minutes before Veth returns, thinking on just how badly he’s fucked up this time. There were signs _weeks_ ago. He could have stopped this. If he had just stopped being so stupidly irrational, so caught up in his own vices -

His thoughts are cut off by the door opening up again, Veth slipping back in and Eodwulf following. With a flicker, the candle by the door lights up, and while he squints against the sudden light, it doesn’t send stabs of pain through his vision, and he relaxes.

“ _Hallo_ , Caleb,” Eodwulf says quietly, and he comes and sits in the chair that’s been placed next to his bed. “Let’s get you sitting up, okay?”

Caleb nods, just barely, and heaves a sigh as Eodwulf lifts him up, Veth carefully rearranging pillows behind him so that he can sit up with no issue. “There you go, there you go,” Eodwulf mutters, and Caleb blinks away the dizziness that just that small change of position brought him.

Eodwulf waits till he’s steady, and then holds out a glass of water. “Do you think you can hold it?” He asks, and Caleb swallows down embarrassment.

He shakes his head.

Eodwulf nods, face serious. The straw that he procures from his pocket is anything but serious, though - it’s twisted into a heart, and Caleb hums looking at it, an exhausted half-chuckle leaving his mouth.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, Jester dug these out from somewhere. I can get normal ones if - ah. If you need me to.” He holds the glass up to Caleb’s face, and Caleb takes the straw into his mouth, taking slow careful sips. He really, _really_ doesn’t want to throw up again, even if it’s just water.

But the water stays where it’s meant to be, and he drains the glass slowly. The boba is eaten halfway through, and he washes down the taste of arcane nothingness with more water, til the glass is empty and Eodwulf is smiling at him.

“Good job, _liebling_.” Caleb doesn’t want to be praised for just doing the literal bare minimum to keep himself alive, but the words make him feel warm anyways.

“Do you want me to stay to help, Caleb?” Veth is twisting her hands in her dress again, nervous, and he wants to reach out to her, to tell her that he’s okay, but he really doesn’t have the energy to lie.

He shrugs, his shoulders falling with a huff, and Veth nods hesitantly before turning to Eodwulf.

“I’ll call if I need any help, Veth,” Wulf says gently, and Veth nods, slipping out the door with a final glance at Caleb.

Then, he is alone with Eodwulf, and the man drags a hand down his face before sighing and looking back at him.

“We’ll figure this out, _liebling_. You’ll be okay. But let’s get you cleaned up, okay?”

He loses a bit of time, in the space between Eodwulf helping him out of bed to being undressed and sitting in the tub, warm water surrounding him and Eodwulf’s arm keeping him upright, but he supposes that’s alright. Wulf, at least, doesn’t look too worried, and he lets himself relax into the water. It’s just on the side of too-hot against his skin, but aside from how the heat makes the dizziness and fast-paced beat of his heart worse, it’s nice, pain leeching out of his bones. But by the time Eodwulf’s scrubbed dirt out of his hair with gentle hands and wiped him down, he feels less relaxed and more miserable by the minute, the heat sending his heart racing, and the discomfort shows on his face as he blinks black spots out of his vision.

“Bren - Caleb, _liebling_ , what’s wrong, did I hurt you?” Eodwulf’s voice is panicked, and his head turns toward the other man.

“W - wrong,” he breathes out, and shivers as another wave of dizziness crosses over him. “Some - something’s wrong.”

He has just enough time to see Eodwulf take his pulse and curse, face going white, before darkness consumes his vision, and he’s drifting again, time slipping by him in uncertain moments.

Hearing Eodwulf call for Caduceus in a desperate voice as he stares blankly at the edge of the bathtub, his heart racing in his ears, unsteady and sending waves of dizziness through his whole body.

Caduceus’s face, serious and worried and frazzled in a way that he usually doesn’t see the firbolg. Jester, sometime later, hovering above him in bed with tear tracks down her face. Astrid, helping him sip more water, hands red and raw like she’s scrubbed them a dozen times in the past hour.

Beau, reading aloud to him beside his bed, voice tripping over unfamiliar words but plowing through anyways. Waking up, choking on air, and breathing through the attack with Veth’s hands on his inhaler, keeping it to his mouth. Yasha, holding him while his sheets are changed. Someone he doesn’t recognize, a half-elf, taking his pulse and feeling his forehead and asking him questions that he doesn’t remember answering.

Fjord, silent and steady and worried, meditating next to him as Caleb stares at the ceiling. As hours pass. As days pass, as he is trapped inside himself, drifting in a body that doesn’t respond to him.

For a while, his health doesn’t get worse, but it doesn’t improve, either. He can’t move, except for small movements of his hands. He can barely talk. The pain is present, spiking with sensory overloads and migraines and asthma attacks. His heart works overtime at some exertion that isn’t happening, and it makes him weak and dizzy and shaky. He knows that he’s losing weight despite his friends’ best efforts.

They still don’t know what’s wrong. It’s been six days since he was at Yussah’s.

At this point, he really wishes he hadn’t gone at all. That he had rested. That he could have staved this off from coming.

He spends most of the time drifting, caught in a state between sleeping and waking where he’s not really aware of what’s happening. His brain is filled with fog in most of his waking moments, only short bursts of clarity guiding him through from day to day, and the longer this goes on the shorter those moments get. He can feel his friends get more and more agitated around him, more and more worried, but try as he might he can’t force apologies or explanations past exhaustion and pain. Clerics come and go, in some of the moments that he’s lucid, but they have no more answers to give them.

He wonders if this is how he dies.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Light on the horizon

Yussah visits, another two or three days later. (He’s losing count.)

It’s strange, to see the man out of his tower, but Yussah barely talks to him. He doesn’t blame him too much; he’s not exactly a thrilling conversationalist right now, considering getting words out takes as much energy as he has, and he has to save it for important moments.

Now, some of those moments are, in fact, to gently poke fun at Astrid and Eodwulf, but he needs his outlets.

Yussah visits, and brings with him a stack of books almost as high as he is that Caleb watches Beau, Astrid, and Wulf pore through with Yussah over the next few days, books on curses and illnesses and spells and old magic. They think they hit an answer in reading about Eiselcross, but the proposed disease of the Fridgid Woe does not match his symptoms - and thank gods, he thinks idly, because that is a disease with no known cure. He would have been already laying in his grave if that had been the illness.

He is probably already lying in his grave, but he is loathe for his friends to have to realize that.

Time slips away from him in pieces that he fails to grasp. He’s no longer truly sure what day it is, lost in the feverish stupor of whatever illness is attacking him, and his memories of the following days, weeks - he cannot remember, but he knows that time passes, measured in the darkness gathering in his friends’ eyes and in the frailness and lost strength present in his own limbs. He tries standing under his own power, one moment, on a day where he had been feeling - not better, but less horrific - and his legs collapse under him, unable to hold his own weight. He’s having trouble keeping food down, only barely able to manage his magic food bobas, and water has been even more of a struggle, enough that his throat aches and his vision swims with every waking moment.

They bring in other clerics, at some point, but he’s having trouble focusing on being awake enough to remember any of them, and their attempts at help rarely work. One spends a full hour shouting at him to get up and that it’s all in his head, and he spends the next four days curled into a ball, shaking, a migraine strong enough that he tries to claw his own ears off burning away in his head. (Beauregard spends days apologizing for that. She had heard good things, and didn’t know that that was going to happen, and she’s so fucking sorry, please, Caleb, just open your eyes -)

He would be scared about the fact that he’s in all likelihood dying, but it’s hard to feel much of anything.

It’s strange, when Essek shows up. He doesn’t remember agreeing to the other wizard to come here, but he considering how little he remembers these days, he might as well have, and Essek is clearly worried, eyes dark and face set in a deep frown, wrinkling around his mouth. He thinks he’s just there for a brief visit - to say goodbye, to see his dying former friend - but Essek stays, there for a number of blurry days before someone else comes.

It’s another cleric, he thinks at least, but one that he doubts came from Nicodranas, especially considering that she speaks with a Rosohna accent. She’s an orc, taller than Yasha and built like a fighter, but with soft hands and a soft voice and glasses chain attacked to the jewelry on the bases of her tusks. She doesn’t ask him any questions as she examines him, just presses soft hands against areas of his body and hums, gold sunlight spilling out between her fingers.

She doesn’t make a difference immediately, but over the next few days, as she continues doing whatever she’s doing - he feels more… lucid. Aware of what’s happening around him, better able to concentrate, to sleep instead of passing out, to breathe easier and exist with less pain. He doesn’t feel well, by any means, but it takes the edge off in increments, enough that by the fifth day, he opens his eyes, and feels able enough to prop himself up on the pillows shoved against the wall on his bed.

He’s alone, for the time being. His room has changed, in the… unknowable amount of time he’s spent in this room. His bed is the same size, but he’s fairly sure he’s the only one who’s been sleeping in it. If you can call what was happening sleeping. There’s a armchair in the corner of the room, a stack of books next to it and a drawing pad propped up on the table near it, and there’s a collection of empty potion bottles and powder sachets on the nearest nightstand, residue from failed treatment attempts.

When he lifts his hand, it shakes terribly, and he’s paler than he’s been since the asylum, veins standing out in contrast, but he manages to grab the glass of water next to his bed, balancing it in the crook of his arm and sipping slowly through the straw.

The door opens while he’s still struggling to hold the glass, and he glances up into the surprised face of Yasha, squinting against the light from the hallway. She rushes to close it, and he sets the glass back down on the bedside table, hand shaking with the small movement.

“You’re awake,” Yasha whispers, and her hand comes up over her mouth. “You…” she steps closer to the bed, and he makes out the joy on her face through the darkness.

It hurts to hold himself upright, and the wince on his face prompts Yasha to rearrange the pillows behind him, enough so that he’s supported. He blinks back some mild dizziness, ignores the growing wheeze in his chest, and gets out, “What… day is it?”

Yasha’s face goes flat, and he feels his heart sink in return.

Too long, then.

“Al - almost a month and a half,” she murmurs, and he stares at her as she sits on the edge of his bed. “We were so scared. Essek brought… oh, I should go get - I’m sorry, Caleb, the others will want to know you’re awake.”

He balks at the idea of too many people in to see them, of noise light color sound -

He grips Yasha’s wrist weakly, fingers trembling, and she catches his hand, setting his arm back down on the bed. “Just Astrid and the cleric, it’s alright, it’s alright. Just hold on.”

She nods at him, and almost flies out of the room, door shutting behind her with the softest click.

The sheets on his bed are a deep blue, softer than anything he’s owned before, and he notices to his own embarrassment that he’s mostly naked, only clad in his smallclothes and a sheet drawn up around his chest. His hair is long, but his face is shaven, and he rubs one hand against his chin. Someone must have shaved him, at least in the past few days, and the room smells not of sweat but of gentle soap and the small number of wildflowers in a vase near the door.

He does not deserve the kindness his friends have been giving him.

While not approaching attack levels, the wheeze in his chest fails to quiet, and he glances around for his inhaler. Maybe he misses it in the mess of empty vials on the table near his bed, but he doesn’t find it, and a crackling fear starts to burn in his lungs as moments draw out into minutes, the silence of the room broken up only by the sounds of his breathes that get louder and faster the longer time goes on. He can feel his heart stutter in his chest, pushed into a frantic pace both from his breathing and the anxiety he’s feeling, and it sends him shuddering as it skips and flutters.

There is no sound outside of his room, but the door half-slams open seconds later, Astrid pushing in with a bracelet glowing a vivid red around her wrist, the unfamiliar orcish cleric following at a quick pace behind her, and she wastes no breath as she comes into his room, drawing open the drawer of the table beside him and pulling out a intricately carved wooden box that she sets on the side of his bed, a blueish crystal hemisphere connected to it by visible strands of magic. He flinches back from it, no memory of anything but the crystals Ikithon implanted within him coming to mind, but Astrid presses it to his face regardless and he breathes in a gust of air, magic and medicine pushing into his lungs and opening his throat until he’s relaxed on the bed, wheezing calmed. The charmed crystal forms a mask across his face that remains when Astrid moves her hand away, and his eyes flutter as he drinks in the feeling of being able to _breathe_ again.

When he peels his eyes open again, Astrid is sitting on the edge of the bed, the bracelet gone from red to a gentler yellow, and the orc woman has his wrist in her hand, feeling his pulse with calloused fingers. She smiles at him, but her attention is still clearly on his pulse, and he feels his heart once again flutter in his chest.

“I’m going to touch your chest, alright, Mr. Widogast? No pain, I promise.” She pauses, and he nods, weakly. Her other hand lays across his chest, large enough to span almost the entire width of his sternum, and the wave of warmth that emanates from it sends him relaxing even further back into the pillows, heartbeat slowing, anxiety easing.

“Alright.” She pulls back, and Astrid takes up his hand, looking at him with hopeful eyes.

“This is Shimla - _gods_ , Caleb, we’ve been so scared. Essek brought her in from Rosohna, she’s a curse specialist - we thought we were losing you, we were so desperate…” Astrid’s hands are raw along the knuckles - she’s been biting them again, he thinks, and the thought sends a pang through him - and she grabs his hand tightly. “You weren’t even aware anymore, and it was even worse after that asshole saw you… Shimla’s been trying something new, and it’s working, thank _gods_ it’s working.”

He hasn’t seen Astrid this emotional in decades, and he squeezes her hand back as tightly as he can, which in retrospect is probably hardly reassuring, given that his grip strength is akin to a newborn.

Shimla shifts her hand off his chest, the golden glow emanating from it diminishing, and he glances back at her. “I used to treat Essek, when he was much younger,” she says, voice deep and calming, almost an echo of Caduceus’s. “And I worked on the frontlines with the Aurora Guard for many years before that. I’m fairly certain I’ve identified what’s causing your body this much grief, though I’m afraid it’s not much good news. You’re a wizard, I understand? A transmutation specialist?”

He nods, and Shimla returns with one of her own. “Are you familiar with a _letumobitis_ curse?”

While the word seems vaguely familiar, translated Celestial, he is unaware of any spell by that name, and he shakes his head, wincing faintly as his neck protests.

Shimla sighs, and sits in the chair drawn close to his bedside. “As I’ve been told, you were involved with the takedown of one of the former members of the Cerberus Assembly, one with a personal vendetta against you. When he died, did you hear him mutter any last incantations? Any last words?”

Caleb’s eyes widen, and he nods, the memory of that day - terror and relief and anguish all linked in his brain - at the forefront of his mind.

“Yes, though… I didn’t catch the specifics,” he murmurs, the crystal mask of whatever breathing treatment is easing air into his lungs not restricting his words.

Astrid holds his hand tighter at the sound of his voice.

“The specifics aren’t necessary, Mr. Widogast, it’s alright. With that confirmation, and the pathways I’ve been tracing, I’m fairly confident this is a _letumobitis_ curse, a modified one. This kind of curse is… powerful. Cast with the energy of the practitioner’s final moments, it enacts a permanent effect on the victim’s internal magic, causing their magic to essentially attack the victim’s own immune system, their own bodily functions. Victims of a typical _letumobitis_ are dead within weeks. But from what I’ve managed to gather, this is a modified curse, one designed to bring suffering rather from death. While the curse itself has no known cure, the fact that this is modified to specifically _not_ cause death works in our favor, because it means I can treat the symptoms as they come instead of having to focus on eradicating an entangled curse to try and save your life. In time, you should recover. I cannot guarantee how much, because I haven’t seen one modified to this magnitude before, but at the very least I can promise improvement. Things are already better than when I arrived - you being awake and semi-upright is a sign of that.”

She sits back. “I have to say, though, this is an… incredibly cruel modification. I am glad that whoever that man was, you already killed him.”

He’s growing tired again, the effort of his momentary panic and of listening swirling around in his mind, but he turns towards Astrid.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and she scowls at him. He pushes forward regardless. “You shouldn’t… have to be stuck taking… care of me.”

Astrid scowls harder, and he sighs in contentment as she runs a gentle hand through his hair.

“You are my _best friend_ ,” she whispers fiercely. “My partner, my love, my _liebling_ , I would fight Ikithon a thousand times to keep you safe. You will be well again. We will all be with you until that happens.”

A tear drips down his cheek, and his arms are too tired to wipe it off.

He’s starting to drift again, but he holds onto Astrid’s hand as Shimla steps out of the room, shutting the door behind her, knowing that he’s too out of it to continue her explanations.

“We love you, Caleb. Forever and always. Even in this. Especially in this.” She brushes his cheek with her thumb, and he sighs against her hand as she cradles the side of his face. “Rest.”

She helps him lay back down, pillows supporting his neck, his back, his knees - even with the aching of his body, he is so comfortable, and sleep comes across him like a gentle wave.

“Rest,” she murmurs, and he follows her direction.

* * *

He has no dreams, that night, and wakes hours later into a dark room, the soft breaths of someone asleep in the chair in the corner his only company. Though it’s too dark to see properly, he can see the outline of Caduceus slumped over in the armchair, too-long limbs splayed over the plush fabric, hear the firbolg’s gentle snoring, though softer than normal.

Every part of him hurts, but it’s a distant ache, one put at bay by the comfort that surrounds him. He takes in the room, mind more aware than his previous awakenings, and realizes a few things.

One, that there are heavy blackout curtains across the window, the only light in the room coming from a dim globule set next to the door; otherwise, the room is dark, and his eyes are fully adjusted, making out details across the room in shades of gray. Two, there is some charm on the room or on himself, because he can hear none of the usual bustle of the tower, the only noise in the room his own breaths and Caduceus’s snoring - he surmises that the charm is on himself, rather than the room, otherwise he’s sure the snoring would be much, much louder. Three:

He is still, for the most part, naked.

The blush that he feels creep across his face is a welcome normalcy, and he tugs the sheets up around his shoulders with weak hands. The movement, though, lets him recognize another thing, which is that there’s carefully inked runes on his wrists, across his chest, across the back of his hand. He panics for a moment, trying to brush them off, but then he reads the celestial. Monitoring runes, he realizes, probably linked to Astrid’s bracelet that he had noticed earlier. To make sure he doesn’t-

He cuts that thought off. To watch over him, that’s all.

The table by his bedside has been cleared off, only the wood box of the breathing enchantment left on there of the original clutter, next to it a glass of water with a heart shaped straw, and a stack of books that he had bought and never gotten the chance to read, a few weeks ago. He tries picking one up, and almost fumbles it into the water glass, but eventually pulls it into his lap, settling against the pillows with a low sigh. The light in his room is dim, but he can still make out the words on the page well enough to read, and he loses himself in magical theory for minutes, an hour, two hours -

He’s pulled out of reading by the headache starting to tug at his eyes, exhaustion once again making itself known, and by Caduceus waking up with a snort, snores cutting off as the firbolg stretches against the chair. Caleb isn’t sure what time it is, with the window covered, but he gives a wave to Caduceus before closing the book and setting it back on the nightstand.

“Ah,” Caduceus says, and he sits up in a fluid motion, blanket falling from around his shoulders. “Good to see you awake, Caleb. It’s…” he taps a small sphere on the table beside the armchair, and smiles. “About nine in the morning. Would you like me to try opening the curtains, a bit?”

Caleb considers his headache, and weighs it against seeing sunlight. He chooses the sunlight.

He nods, and Caduceus crosses the room to the window, drawing the thick curtains back carefully until a sliver of morning sun cuts across Caleb’s bed. There’s no world visible outside the window, magical construct, and all, but the sunlight is true to life, and although Caleb has to squint against the brightness, it doesn’t make his headache any worse. Caduceus opens the blinds a touch more, enough that the room is lit with the diffuse glow and a large beam across Caleb’s legs, and steps back, smiling gently.

The light is warm against his legs, and Caleb looks around the room in the new light, touching on things he had noticed earlier, now colorful, and truly visible.

The straw in the water glass is hot pink.

He wonders if Jester painted it, or if she found some store selling hot pink heart shaped straws, and wonders idly if they can come in cat shapes.

“Do you mind if I check in on you, Caleb? If it’s too much or you’re tired, just let me know and I’ll let you rest.”

Caleb jolts, mind drawn back to the present. “ _Nein_ , _nein_ , you are fine, my friend. It is… not so bad, right now.”

A smile creeps across Caduceus’s face. “I’m very glad to hear that.”

Caduceus’s hands dwarf his own as the other man takes his pulse, his temperature, listens to his chest and casts a diagnostic. The fragile health and weight Caleb had built up so painstakingly in the years since the Asylum - or, more accurately, in the time since he met Veth - is all but gone now, his wrists as fragile as he remembers them being when he woke to his mind shattered and his memories tampered with, but the room is warm, and he is comfortable, and he is not there. Caduceus pauses with his hand on Caleb’s shoulder, and Caleb reminds himself to breathe, to not fall into a whirlpool of memories.

“While you’re up, would you like me to grab anyone? There’s been… well, too many people in here would overwhelm you, and Miss Shimla cautioned us on how we had to avoid over-stressing you for now - but Eodwulf and Astrid should be awake, or Beauregard, or Veth -“

Caleb grabs Caduceus’s hand, and squeezes, once, before letting his own drop to his lap, shoulders smarting at the sudden movement. “Eodwulf and Astrid, if you could?” He murmurs, pushing stubbornly against the exhaustion that’s starting to rise. He wants to see his partners, not sleep _more_.

Caduceus gives him another wide smile, and dips his head. “I’ll be right back, then. Hold on…”

The firbolg wanders out of the room, blanket still draped over his shoulders, and Caleb tugs his own sheets around him a little more tightly, muffling a yawn into his fist. Just a few more minutes, he promises himself, and he taps against his leg as he waits.

His eyes dip closed, but spring back open as the door creaks, and in seconds his arms are full of muscle and soft fabric as Eodwulf practically flings himself at him, smile gleeful and just a tinge desperate, Astrid following in more sedately behind him. Caleb hugs him back with as much strength as he can gather, and Eodwulf lets out a choked noise into his shoulder, a cross between a sob and a laugh. Caleb holds him tighter, and looks over to Astrid, nodding at her to come in as well.

She slides in next to him on the bed, and for a few blissful minutes they hold each other together in silence, arms wrapped around each other and legs entangled. He tries to fight against falling asleep - he has so many questions, about who Shimla is, about the curse, about what they can do to fix him - but he fails, and the world around him starts to fade as he gives in to the exhaustion.

He feels the press of soft lips against his brow, Eodwulf’s voice whispering something unintelligible, and he trips into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit of a shorter chapter, compared to the first's monstrous size, but I'm chugging along none the less. shimla is a creation that I pulled from my roleplay habits; she's a follower of the luxon, a lesbian, a wife, a mother to two adopted children (one bugbear and one baby firbolg), and overall a delight

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment with any thoughts!


End file.
